5 Ergebnisse.

In his fifth popular book about language, Howard Richler moves from A to Z with one specially chosen word for every letter of the alphabet. What especially intrigues him is how words come to mean what they mean, how they lose some meanings and gain others. Always humorous, Richler invites readers into the intimacy of language and allows us to delight in the ever-shifting glories of English. Among his questions are the following: What is the pr...

Literary Nonfiction. The bawdy English language has never been overly concerned with purity, and this promiscuous proclivity has contributed to many alluring word histories. Richler combines his etymological talents with those of the muck-raking journalist to expose the louche baggage that many words have accumulated throughout the centuries. Composed of short chapters with each containing ten words from specific fields, STRANGE BEDFELLOWS wil...

Drawing from his 'Speaking of Language' columns written for The Montreal Gazette, Howard Richler invites readers to enjoy the pleasures of exploring the English language -- which is rapidly becoming the world's lingua franca. Among other things, Richler traces how foreign words invaded the English language over the centuries, and how people's names came into existence. Richler completes his tour of English with a special section on Canadian En...

An old joke goes like this: Whats the difference between a good girl and a nice girl? Answer: The good girl goes to a party, goes home, then goes to bed, whereas the nice girl goes to the party, goes to bed, then goes home. While we think of nice nowadays as being a synonym for pleasant it was not always so, originally the words meaning conveyed the naughtiness implied in the joke. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that nice conv...

Keine Beschreibung.